


Avoidance

by zephsomething



Series: Surviving the War [50]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:21:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25535029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zephsomething/pseuds/zephsomething
Summary: Harry goes to the ministry and runs into Draco for the first time since the war ended.
Series: Surviving the War [50]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/813804
Comments: 6
Kudos: 26





	Avoidance

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a ball of anxiety so y'all get another fic on the weekend, congratulations!

“Harry I swear to god-”

“Iced tea, extra mint.” Harry interrupted her with a small smile. Between the late August heat and the sleepless nights Ginny had been rapidly losing patience over the course of the summer. Harry shifted James so he could put the glass down on the table they’d put in by their quidditch field. “I’m going to take James into the ministry today, Dean and Seamus are getting some folks together for lunch.”

“Thank you.” She rubbed at her head and landed close enough to press her forehead to his. “I’m so tired.”

“I know, maybe have a nap while we’re gone.” He laughed and pressed a quick kiss to her cheek. “I’ll pass on your love.”

“Tell Seamus to cut his hair, he looks like a mop.” She called over her shoulder as she kicked off the ground again.

“I think he’s going for rakish.” Harry called after her, her laughter followed him as he walked back towards the house. He grabbed James’ bag on his way to the front door. He’d taken James out without the bag once, he did not want a repeat of that ever again.

They apparited to the ministry and James let out a burble and waved his hands in the air as they arrived. The witch at the desk made a motion towards him that was half wave and half salute. Harry just waved rather awkwardly in response. These days it was like he was revisiting 11 again, getting all sorts of praise just because he’d survived. At least this time he knew why everyone was looking at him like that.

“Harry!” Seamus was still head and shoulders shorter than Dean but his grin and wild waving made up for the difference. They were both growing out their hair which looked good on Dean but Ginny wasn’t far wrong about Seamus. “How’s the little?”

“He’s fine, Ginny’s not nearly as big a fan of the heat though.” He grinned as he approached them. “Or your hair Seamus.”

“Yeah neither is my mum.” Judging by his grin he didn’t seem to care much.

“Arguments from all quarters for you then?” Harry raised an eyebrow as he followed them further into the ministry.

“Just about, my job loves me, ministry isn’t such a fan though.” The grin he shot at Dean was full of laughter and Dean did a right poor job of looking stern.

“Well maybe if you didn’t use quite so much magic at your muggle job?” The corners of his lips twitched as laughter fought to overtake his attempt at seriousness.

“Demolition wouldn’t be nearly as much fun without a little magic.”

“No wonder the ministry isn’t your biggest fan.” Harry just grinned as Dean tried and failed to glare at him as well. “What about you then? Art taking off I hear?”

“Yeah, me and Padma went halves on a studio with a little showroom underneath.” Dean’s grin was entirely proud and Harry didn’t blame him at all. “Little Dennis Creevy is thinking of joining us too, get some photography in the mix with the paints and charcoal and all.”

“I’ll have to drop by sometime, give the papers something to talk about again.”

“Ah yes, the cultural growth of the famous Harry Potter.” Seamus took on a pompous tone. “Recently spotted frequenting art galleries we can only conclude that Harry Potter is blah blah blah.”

“Fifty fifty shot they try to make it seem like I’m a terrible person.”

“It’s that or a saint isn’t it?” Dean chuckled.

“I’d like them to try the whole hero gig, it isn’t exactly a cake walk.” Harry sighed and then grinned as James made a bubbly sort of noise that wasn’t quite a snore but meant the same thing. “Oh good.”

“Asleep?”

“For now, it won’t last long though.” Harry ran a hand through his hair. “He’s decided sleep is for other people only.”

“Oooh, bet that’s fun.” Seamus chuckled as the elevator doors opened and they headed off down another corridor.

“Oh loads, almost as much as the hero gig.” Harry smirked as they stopped in front of the auror’s office.

Dean rapped out a specific knock on the door before opening it and the noise of the place washed over them as they entered. Nearly everyone in the office paused long enough to wave, several came over to say hello. Between catching up and showing off James, who woke up as soon as someone cooed about how cute he was, it took them nearly twenty minutes to reach the back of the office.

“Oh good, you made it.” Hermione didn’t even look up from the stack of paperwork she’d brought with her to lunch. Ron grinned and gestured at the open seats. Dennis Creevy sat across from Hermione, he wasn’t quite so little anymore with the long limbs and wiry muscles he’d developed in the years after the war. A handful of others who’d moved from the ranks of the DA and into the aurors clustered around the table and waved greetings as Harry, Dean, and Seamus sat down.

The spread of food they’d accumulated on the table took up a good chunk of everyone’s concentration at first, then James started fussing and talk turned to families, and after that conversation flowed easily. Right up until the job called all the aurors back to work and Hermione finished her stack of work and made her excuses to get back to her office. Ron, Dean, and Seamus suggested moving to the Leaky Cauldron to see Neville and Hannah but Harry waved them off. He was hopeful that if he wandered around the ministry long enough James might actually sleep longer than half an hour.

Then as the doors to the aurors office clicked shut behind him he walked straight into someone.

“Ah sorry, wasn’t paying attention-” He said it at exactly the same time as a soft voice in front of him. Harry blinked a few times as he tried to connect that voice, in that tone, to the face in front of him.

“Malfoy?”

“Uncle Harry!” Teddy swung on Malfoy’s hand with a big grin on his face.

“Teddy?”

“We were just, well my aunt was called in and I just, uh,” Malfoy rubbed at the back of his neck with his free hand. Harry, ever the quick thinker, still haven’t even processed the fact that Malfoy and Teddy were together much less the way Malfoy was holding himself these days, or the way he wasn’t rather.

“Uncle is bringing me and lunch to Gran!” Teddy explained with the kind of straightforwardness you only find in seven year olds. “We’re spending the day out!”

“Andromeda asked me to watch him is all.” Draco lifted a shoulder and tried not to let his nerves show too much. Without his old arrogance to hide behind it was much harder to talk around Potter all of a sudden. Then the sling on Potter’s chest started whining and he felt something in him relax a bit. “Did you get stuck on babysitting duty too?”

“What? Oh no, this one’s mine.” Potter pulled the sling a bit and Draco saw a baby with a shocking amount of hair and large brown eyes blinking up at him. Then the baby made that whining sound again. “Yeah, yeah James I know. It’s hard being a baby.”

“Is he talking yet?” Teddy frowned up at Potter like he was finding the baby less exciting than expected.

“No, he won’t be talking for a while yet Teddy.” Potter reached forward to ruffle Teddy’s hair, blond today though the rest of him looked very much like his dad.

“Settled down with the Weasley girl then?” Draco put more effort than he’d like to admit into keeping his voice even.

“I wouldn’t call it settling down.” The grin that flashed over Potter’s face was fond and pleased and made something inside Draco twist a bit. An odd silence settled as he searched for something to say. Potter saved him the trouble of breaking it though. “What about you?”

“Pardon?”

“Are you dating anyone? Settled down maybe?” Harry asked, flipping the question back on Malfoy as he tried to get his brain to process the fact that he was having a strange but rather normal conversation with him. So many things had just been left between them after the Battle he’d expected some kind of confrontation.

“I, yeah,” Malfoy did a strange sort of shrug. “Yeah I settled, I-”

“There you are!” There was laughter in the voice that interrupted them and Harry looked up to see a woman coming towards them. She was just as pale and blond as Draco was but there was something more lively about her eyes, not to mention the grin that made it clear where the laughter came from. “Thought maybe you forgot your way through the ministry.”

“Nah, just-” Malfoy made a sort of wave in Harry’s direction and he shrugged. The woman looked Harry over with a smile that said she knew something he didn’t. The smile alone would have been enough for him to place her in Slytherin but the amount of green and silver subtly added throughout her outfit made it a statement. Not the statement most people wanted to make these days. Harry couldn’t help but admire the bravery in that.

“Come on Draco, are you going to leave your Aunt hungry and waiting?” She slipped her arm through Malfoy’s and winked at Teddy. “Besides, you and Harry are blocking the doorway.”

“We don’t want to do that, she’s awful grouchy when she’s hungry.” Teddy joined in immediately and Harry felt like the whole world had tilted suddenly.

“It’s just, did,” Malfoy let out a sigh as the woman hid a giggle behind a hand. The frown he gave her had no heat behind it, just some emotion Harry couldn’t put a finger on. “Astoria.”

“Silly.” She rolled her eyes and turned that same smile on Harry again. “Did you want to join us? I’m sure Andromeda wouldn’t mind.”

“I just ate.” He said it without thinking. It was the first question in this whole conversation that had been easy to answer. Though it made him no less confused when Malfoy looked almost disappointed with that answer.

“See you around then Potter.” She flicked a two finger salute at him and her tone turned both the salute and his name into something like a joke, one that Harry almost wanted to laugh along with.

“Bye.” Malfoy waved with the hand that was holding Teddy’s and Teddy waved with both of his as they walked off down the hall.

Harry made a beeline for the only person he knew for sure could force the world back to the right sort of tilt. Hermione looked up from her desk with a raised eyebrow as Harry walked in unannounced. He launched into the whole story right away, trying to emphasize the weirdness of it all. When he was finished however Hermione looked entirely unimpressed.

“Isn’t it possible he’s just grown up?” Hermione asked her eyebrow no lower than it had been when he walked into the room. Her tone was the same that it had been for all their years at hogwarts when she pointed out the obvious things they’d forgotten to put in essays. “It has been six years you know, most of us have grown up in one way or another.”

“You think seventeen years of being one way can just flip in six though?” He frowned.

“I think he started growing up before that Harry.” She shrugged and let the usual mask she kept up at work drop. Under it she just looked tired. “The war happened to all of us after all, no matter which side we were on at the beginning.”

James saved him from having to answer that one by picking that moment to start wailing. She was right though, all of them had been touched by the war. The whole thing left him feeling weird though, he just wasn’t sure how to deal with it.


End file.
